20th of August – Another long day in Parliament. I met my interns in Parliament at 9.10 am, shot Monday Night Chat and then attended a PAC hearing on DBKL. The current mayor, Dato Nor Hashim was formerly MPSJ mayor. I greeted him as a dear friend, but still gave him and his DBKL officers some heated questions. The hearing will now be adjourned sine die, to enable an audit to be conducted and thereafter report back to us.
At around 12 noon, I met Sandra, a student doing her IB extended essay on palm oil. She is currently studying in UWC Maastricht, and she knows my former intern Nadira. I answered her questions and then dashed off for a super quick lunch before another meeting with visitors Natalie and Daphne. Natalie, a Malaysian who lives in London is writing a report on the financial and tax status of charities in Malaysia.
After that it was back to another PAC hearing on Finas. In attendance with other officials was the actor Hans Issac, who is now chairman of Finas. His appearance got the ladies in the PAC, a bit flustered. This last PAC meeting for the day ended at 5 pm.
Meanwhile, YB Michelle Ng attended the MPSJ Engineering Department meeting at 3pm on the cause of flood. She updated me at 5.15 pm.
The meeting had the following findings.
The causes of the flood are:-
1. Extraordinary heavy rainfall. Rainfall is considered heavy between 30mm-40mm. The fateful Saturday recorded 160mm of rainfall.
2. Development over the last decade has increased ‘run off surfaces’. There remains only about 10% of land in Subang Jaya that can absorb water; i.e grass, trees. All other surfaces are either hardened or concretised.
3. The combination of the above two matters, means the drain capacity was insufficient to cope with the flash flood.
According to YB Michelle, the MPSJ Engineering Department has in place proposals to improve drain capacity. They have even prepared tender documents. The issue now is money, or the lack of it. MPSJ will be appealing for additional funding from state and federal governments.
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